it, no need to tell them to install strange things like ekiga and manipulate
the router... that's
fantastic for non technical people.

but prevent opensource solution to come. why go from a jail to an
other jail? Goggle is no more trustable than Microsoft (in the long term)

I do prefer opensource, but I need, want, to talk to non-technical people
living far away, which
only use Windows. What I use currently is POT, very closed source and payware
per minute.

I would be content not having to boot Windows for the task. Me, I mean.

I'm also attempting to use Ekiga. I tried to connect two computers in the same
network (in order to
test the hardware) and it was impossible, both hang and do not work. The two
ekigas see one another,
but the called party does not produce even noise, and the other is sending a
continuous, non-stop,
stream of data over the network. One of the two has to be killed. If I reverse
calling from one to
the other result is the same, only that it is the other onw which has to be
killed (I don't remember
if it is the caller or the called).

I still would have to test calling outside instead, that's a pending task.
Perhaps inside the same
network is impossible (IP to IP, no gatekeeper or whatever)

However, convincing the party I want to talk to, to install Ekiga in their
windows machine, and then
configuring the router or whatever they have to open the appropriate ports, is
utterly impossible,
for people that are not geeky at all.

What I have seen this kind of people use is hotmail chat, IIRC. Gmail at least
has a Linux client.